MP3's can contain additional metadata. One of these is Album Art. The art is a big USP for Apple, since they base most of their visual discovery on extracting it from the files and displaying it for each episode if available

The data encoded in the MP3 file is irrelevant, but presumed to be some form of audio that has a consistent theme. It is a 'show', a lecture, a song, a news report etc.

Many players, such as Apple's podcast app will allow you to "subscribe" to a podcast from their catalog or discovery interface, or through proprietry chicklets on a webpage that open the apple app and subscribe with 'one-click'

The podcatcher will download new and/or unlistened episodes to your internal storage for portability and instant playback when desired

A file in OPML2.0 format that contains a number of nodes of type RSS2.0 with enclosures

These lists are meant to be simple, portable and compatible between podcatchers and other RSS2.0 aggregators

Upon reviewing the new Apple Podcasts App, I realized that there is a huge opportunity in the discoverability of podcasts.

It was Apple's typical interface choice that made it all click in my brain.

The app wants you to discover podcasts by either browing through a 'radio dial' metaphor, a directory of pre-determined subjects, or search

Considering that a podcast is no different from a blog with a different payload, this is not the way we have learned to discover content.

If we did, then presumable there would be some huge directory of blogs with a catalog, search and some form of browsing interface with 'recommendations.

The way we *do* discover content is by looking at what our social networks are consuming. We are inundated with links and collections from our friends where we are exposed to new things and if we find itof interest, we follow, friend or subscribe to the source.

There are many freely available mp3 players that have the features available that people want. Playing a podcast or managing playback is individualistic, and anyone interested in audio already has one or more they are comfortable working with

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc have taught an entire generation to view content in a rolling stream of incoming data. This will work with podcasts as well.

Here is an example of my Podcast River I can click on the player right under each new episode, click the Download link to get the file on my local storage device for immediate playback and each item will contain a subscibe button that adds that podcast to your own personal river.

On my River, there is a menu item for 'My Feeds', as well as the raw OPML file

Clicking on the individual feeds expands to reveal all the most recent episodes. The same player, Download and Subscription links should be included here (not implemented in my example) This would be created by a new OPML nodetype named 'podcast'

You can also subscribe to my entire subscription list, and anything new that I add will show up in your river.

Dave probably has all of this already mapped out in his head, or maybe even running on a development server for all I know, but the key here is that there is tremendous opportunity in creating a discoverable web of podcasts that is inherently social, with many future benefits, such as comparison and recommendation based on OPML subscription lists, and cross platform, open development that no single entity can own.

Apple is telling us that we need to discover and manage our media on their terms. This makes no sense when history of social media is analysed. Humans discover and learn from other humans

Local storage integrated with playback is negated by sufficiently high bandwidth

One-Click subscription can be achieved through collections and rivers insted of proprietary apps and chicklets

By linking OPML subscription lists through 'inclusion' and specific 'podcast' rss nodetypes, functions such as search and an open directory can be achieved without centralized ownership

The one thing I have not taken into account in this overview is monetization. Frankly it has no place in the infrastrucutre and detracts from the core mission, which is discovery, subscription and sharing.